


Scared-Ass Dude

by Einzel



Category: Free!
Genre: Gen, Makoto is basically in Shizuo's shoes and Haru just rolls with it, POV First Person, and ends very differently from canon, includes some headcanons I really love, inspired by another anime, it has a happy ending i promise, there isn't much graphic violence but it still deserves a warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-19
Updated: 2016-04-19
Packaged: 2018-06-03 01:05:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6590422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Einzel/pseuds/Einzel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He told me later at the hospital that it wasn’t that he thought about lifting the fridge. He just had to lift it, to protect himself."</p><p>An AU inspired by Heiwajima Shizuo's backstory from Episode 7: "Bad-Ass Dude" of <em>Durarara!!</em>, adapted to suit Makoto's character and told from Haru's point of view.</p><p><strong>Disclaimer:</strong> I started watching <em>Durarara!!</em> some years back, and never finished it. It took me a while to admit (twelve episodes in total) that it just wasn't for me. However, I loved Shizuo's character so much that this crossover idea became a thing as soon as I saw gif sets of him being a bad-ass dude on Tumblr. Not sure how many years I've waited to write this, but when an idea sticks around for that long, it deserves a chance, right?</p><p>I've been told that you don't have to watch or know much of <em>Durarara!!</em> to be able to follow this story - I basically adapted it to suit Makoto, and Haru is a reliable narrator. This was my first time writing a first person POV story, but I enjoyed it, and I hope you will, too!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scared-Ass Dude

**Author's Note:**

> There is a KnB reference in there somewhere. If you know who it is, drop the name of the character and give me a high five.

I should probably start by saying that Makoto hates violence.

He really does.

But that night, as my whole life flashed before my eyes, I realized that it didn’t matter if Makoto hated it or not…

…because he’s been like this for a long time, and probably always will be.

* * *

We’re still not sure why it only started at age seven, going on eight, but maybe before that time, Makoto was just too dense for things to truly sink in. He’s always been easily impressionable, and slow to pick things up. If you could keep a straight face while telling lies, he would believe every single one of them. It wasn’t a bad thing: he was just like any other kid, at least until the twins were born, and Makoto started school.

He took both of these things very seriously. Not to the same degree, though. He was excited to go to school, because it “sounded cool,” and he would get to make more friends. That was it, really. But when Makoto learned he would have little siblings soon, not just one, but two of them, he really did begin to change from a care-free only child into a meddlesome, busybody older brother.

And then… this started, too.

The first time I saw him snap was when we were having breakfast one time. I was there because I spent the night at his house. I often did, and still do, because I like it there. Spending time with Makoto makes him happy, and his parents have always been nice to me. For as long as I can remember, they’ve treated me like I was their second son. It even confused their relatives, how close we were. The year both of us turned seven, Makoto’s parents were visited by a really old woman, I think she was Makoto’s great aunt. I was staying at Makoto’s house at the time, so we all ate dinner together, and then Makoto and I played board games in the living room. The great aunt patted me on the head when she left. I don’t think I spoke to her at all other than saying hello and goodbye, so I soon forgot about her, at least until Christmas, when she sent two packages to Makoto’s parents, one labeled “For the little twins,” and the other labeled “For the big twins.” Makoto’s mother was still laughing when she made Makoto and I open it together so she could film us to show Makoto’s great aunt. We got matching hats, scarves, and mittens, one green and one blue set to match our eyes. It was embarrassing to put them on and pose in them, but then we ended up wearing them until they didn’t fit anymore. She probably still believes we’re twins. I know she complained one time when Makoto’s mother forgot to send her pictures of me.

…Where was I.

Oh, right. The first time. I think it was a Saturday. We were sitting at the kitchen table, having breakfast while Makoto’s mom was making food for the twins, when we saw a centipede crawl across the table.

It’s not like we’ve never seen one before. You can always find some in the backyard, so we’ve known about them for a while. We both knew they could bite you hard, and some species were also venomous, but that never bothered either of us while they were outside, where they belonged.

Maybe that’s why Makoto got so scared, because this one was crawling on the table, near the food he and I were having. I’ve never seen him so scared before. He suddenly turned white, started babbling, and the next thing I knew, he jumped up from his chair and lifted the fridge, to squash the centipede with it.

The crunching sounds I heard were probably his bones breaking when his body couldn’t take the weight of the fridge anymore. How Makoto managed to drop it without hitting any of us or crushing himself completely, I have no idea.

He told me later at the hospital that it wasn’t that he thought about lifting the fridge. He just had to lift it, to protect himself. I hate to think about it, but it was probably a good thing his body gave out. If he had managed to throw the fridge, he might have accidentally hit the twins. Or me. Seeing him lift the fridge made me rise from my seat, but it never occurred to me to move away. I was probably too stunned to move, that first time.

While I sat by his bed to keep him company, the surgeon talked to Makoto’s parents, and told them about this theory he had. According to him, Makoto managed to tap into some latent power of the human body that the brain reserves for emergency situations only. This power allows people to do extraordinary things under extreme duress, things that a normal person’s body can’t do or withstand, which is why Makoto ended up at the hospital.

It made sense for the most part, except a reaction like that wasn’t supposed to be triggered by something as small as a centipede. It confused the surgeon, too, because all he could say was that maybe, Makoto’s brain was wired differently than ours. That for him, the extreme was the default, and vice versa.

We were both too young to understand the details. Either way, Makoto couldn’t control himself. From that day forward, whenever he got scared out of his mind, his body moved on his own. And whenever that happened, he would break his body and whatever was around him. That, he understood, and it made him feel miserable.

I spent a lot of time with him at the hospital. His first stay was so long, I learned wood carving while I was sitting with him, and ended up carving over a dozen things out of small blocks of wood. At first, they were just for practice, but once I got really good at it, I carved a cat figurine, and gave it to Makoto as a get-well present. The nurse who tended to Makoto saw all the other ones I made, and said they were really good, so I let her have one. Eventually, I let her take all the other ones, too, to give to other sick kids on our floor.

It became a tradition over the years. By now, Makoto has two shelves above his bed at home, just for all the get-well figurines I’ve made. I always give him one per hospital trip, which right now makes twenty-nine. One more, and he’ll have to get a third shelf for the new ones, because we all know there will be new ones.

After he woke up from surgery, Makoto was really silent for a while. I first thought he was in too much pain to talk, but when I started carving the cat figurine, he finally said something. No, he asked me something, for the first time.

“Haru-chan..?”

“Hm?”

I didn’t look up. You have to pay attention when working with a carving knife so you don’t cut yourself.

“Are you… afraid of me?”

That’s when I stopped carving so I could look at him. I remember that my initial reaction was to tell him it was a stupid question, but even back then, I understood why he asked. I will never forget the look in his eyes. It probably took a lot of courage to ask me that.

“Not really.”

I made sure the cat figurine would look like it was smiling. Makoto loved it so much, he had it on his nightstand for the rest of his stay.

That was the end of that.

Then, three months later, Makoto was back in hospital again, so I restocked my wood carving set, and carved him a dog. I wasn’t thinking about it that hard, not really, but whenever I see them now, all these figurines look like a list of Makoto’s favorite things.

Figurines or not, Makoto felt awful about himself for a long time. He’s asked me a dozen times, probably because he’s asked himself a thousand times: _Why did it come to this?_

He was raised in a normal, loving home. His only known trauma, his fear of the ocean, was not something he could blame for episodes that occurred far away from the water.

They were way too frequent. So frequent that, scarily enough, his family and I got used to them.

Come swarming season, the twins would hunt down every last bug in the house. I’ve seen Ren take Makoto’s hand and guide him out of the room so Ran could kill a centipede with a rolled-up newspaper. The only thing they couldn’t handle was wasps. That was my job.

Aside from bugs, Makoto’s parents started checking everything we wanted to watch or play, to make sure there were no jump scares. As a result, Makoto was banned from thrillers and horror movies, horror games, and first-person perspective games for the rest of his life.

Most kids his age would have been furious, but Makoto didn’t mind. He could choose between dying of curiosity, and dying of self-inflicted injuries, so he chose the former. It was that simple.

As for me, one thing I did was buy a lot of chocolate. Not sure where I first heard that eating chocolate was good for your nerves, but after a while, I never left my house without a few candy bars in my pockets. Whenever Makoto was starting to get anxious, I’d give him one. He would eat it, and he would calm down. Even if this didn’t really prevent any incidents, it always made him feel a little better, and that’s still something.

I also warned everyone I could not to scare him, ever. His parents told the teachers, so they made Makoto sit at the very back of class, in a corner where no one had any reason to go behind him, but I was the one telling our classmates not to sneak behind him or scare him for any reason. They always asked me why, because they had heard all sorts of rumors. Really stupid ones, the kind that would have made Makoto feel even worse than he already did. So what I told them was,

“If you scare Makoto, I will kill you.”

But you can never warn everyone in advance, and even the ones you’ve threatened might slip up at some point out of habit. Nagisa was like that, but by the time Makoto stopped ripping out lockers at the Iwatobi Swimming Club, even Nagisa had learned his lesson. When the ambulance arrived to pick up Makoto, and I told Nagisa that I wasn’t really shaken because I’ve seen this happen over a dozen times, he started crying like a baby.

Looking at him, I almost felt bad for not crying too, but I really did get used to this, and Makoto was definitely used to the pain, because after a while, he had stopped crying, too.

He never stopped feeling guilty, though. Or scared.

“Haru-chan?”

“Hm?”

“Is Nagisa afraid of me?”

“I don’t know. We’ll find out whenever we see him next. And drop the _-chan_.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, either. He should have known better.”

I actually had no idea when, or _if_ we might see Nagisa again, but I had to say something.

Luckily, Nagisa stopped by the next day to visit Makoto, and he apologized with tears in his eyes. When I think about it, he was probably more worried that Makoto hated him than Makoto was about Nagisa being scared of him. After all, Nagisa finally realized just how much was at stake. It wasn’t just Makoto’s body and the hospital bills, though that was bad enough. It was the property damage. Being banned from places. Being treated differently by people who had heard the rumors. And sometimes, others getting hurt, though that was very rare. For better or for worse, Makoto’s aim is ridiculously good. At archery contests, he’s always been in the top three. If you want a specific prize at a festival booth, you give the gun to him.

...Anyway, Nagisa’s visit made me realize just how hard Makoto had been trying to control himself, because Nagisa was the first person to ask me how Makoto was able to avoid having incidents every month, or even every week. And the answer was that, even though Makoto hates being alone, he started putting distance between himself and others out of fear that he might hurt them.

He would turn down invitations by his classmates, to anything from going to the movies to attending birthday parties, even when he really wanted to go. He would stare longingly at the rollercoaster, then lie to me and say he was fine riding just the carousel. Whenever he had a bad feeling about going out, he would stay in his room for days at a time. What his family and I did to protect him was nothing in comparison to what Makoto did to isolate himself, just because a lot of incidents could have been avoided if other people just minded their own business instead of picking on him.

Knowing that made me hate people so much. Makoto probably forgave Nagisa faster than I did.

Still, that was the moment I realized that there would always be jerks and risks out there, but that’s just how things are. So after that incident with Nagisa, I told Makoto to stop trying to control himself. There was no reason to try in the first place if he couldn’t do it. His body would break each time, but we couldn’t help that. All I wanted was for him to stop breaking his own heart while he was at it.

Makoto told me he would try, but it still took a few more incidents for him to let things go, and accept that he was a good person who just happened to be under a curse.

I think it was the eighteenth time it happened. Some bullies saw us play with a cat on the street, and they wanted it for themselves, probably to mess with it and make us cry. Threatening to beat us up was bad enough, but Makoto didn’t lose it until they mentioned the cat. He probably loves cats more than anything.

When I saw him turn pale, I instinctively grabbed the cat, then dragged Makoto behind the nearest thing, a car parked on the other side of the street. I’m still not sure if I did that because I wanted to stop Makoto, or because I knew he would need something to throw, and the car was the only thing nearby. It didn’t matter, though, because whatever would happen next hinged on the bullies. If they had walked away, content that they managed to scare us just by talking, I might have been able to calm down Makoto. Instead, they started walking over, laughing and taking their time, just to rile us up even more. Makoto was already babbling, and all I could think was, _I hope it hits one of you._

Three seconds later, Makoto flipped the car over, and one of them did get trapped underneath it. The others ran off, screaming and crying. The guy that got trapped started screaming, too. It was so annoying. His legs were crushed, sure, but Makoto broke some bones, too, and he didn’t make a sound. He just threw up on the pavement. I think it was the screaming that really made him sick.

When Makoto was done throwing up, I made him lie down and gave him the cat while I called for help. The operators recognized my voice at once. The men who came with the ambulance knew us, too. They were actually surprised that there were still people in Iwatobi who didn’t know about Makoto. Whether he liked it or not, he had become a legend.

That’s not really important though. What is important is that after the surgery, Makoto looked terrible like he always did, but the moment I sat down by his bed with a piece of wood and my carving knife, he turned to me and said, with a smile, no less, “Do you think you could make a Treecko this time, Haru? I really want a Treecko next..!”

How can you say no to that? I think I smiled the entire time I was carving that Treecko. It was his first starter back when Ruby came out, just a few days before his sixth birthday. Mine was Mudkip in Sapphire. Makoto was so excited to have matching games that his parents ended up buying us both games and two matching consoles, just to make sure Makoto and I could play together. It was the best early Christmas present I ever received.

The Treecko I carved for Makoto was only the beginning, because the next two incidents got me to finish the entire evolutionary line. Those are Makoto’s favorite figurines to date, after the cat. I don’t think anything will ever beat cats in his book.

I finished Sceptile sometime before the end of our first year of junior high. I just barely managed it, but nothing I made in the next three years came even close to looking that good.

I never talk about that time to anyone. It was depressing for reasons I’ve never told Makoto. What really matters about those three years is that I was always tired, and had no desire to do anything, so Makoto and I stuck to doing simple, mundane things, like playing games at home, or going on walks in areas we both knew very well. That was all I could bear to do to keep him company, but maybe that’s a good thing. We went from three to four incidents a year, to two or three incidents a year. My wood carving actually got a little rusty because of that.

And then Nagisa showed up at the start of our second year of high school, and suggested we sneak into the abandoned Iwatobi Swimming Club to get our trophy back. After three years of doing nothing out of the ordinary, it sounded like the premise of a horror story.

I immediately told Nagisa to forget it. To me, going out at night would have just been an inconvenience, but to Makoto, it was another hospital visit just waiting to happen. Nagisa realized that, too, because he quickly told Makoto he didn’t have to come with us, but that was the problem, that he used the word _us_ , even though I told him I wouldn’t come. I always hated that about Nagisa. He tended to talk about things like they had already been settled, and since Makoto is so easily led, he told us he would come, too. That he wanted to be there when we got our trophy back, and if we all hurried and watched each other’s backs, it would probably be fine.

I had a terrible feeling about this. I couldn’t tell if Makoto was being foolish or brave, but Nagisa saying yes to him was probably just foolish. Worse, there was nothing I could do about it. I was the one who told Makoto not to shut himself down all the time, and now he was looking forward to facing a potential fear, and triumphing over it. Deep inside, maybe I wanted to see that, too.

And so, come nightfall, Makoto, Nagisa and I were standing in front of the Iwatobi Swimming Club, Nagisa holding a flashlight and Makoto holding my spade from the shed. The building was so run down, it really did look like a haunted house, so Nagisa dusted all there of us with “purifying salt, for good luck and safety.”

I took one look at Makoto’s face, and decided not to tell them Nagisa had brought sugar instead of salt. For now, I just told him it was cliché as hell to bring salt, and told Makoto that he could wait outside while we got the trophy back, but Makoto insisted he would come with us, so I gave him a candy bar to eat before we broke in. Nagisa asked if he could have one, too. I told him he would get one if he made sure Makoto stayed safe until we were outside again.

Looking back, it didn’t really surprise me that Makoto decided to come inside with us, since we’ve always gone everywhere together, and he didn’t want to be alone in the dead of night, waiting for us. Nor did it surprise me that even though Nagisa was uncharacteristically mindful, Makoto snapped anyway, and somehow managed to hurl an entire row of waiting room bench chairs down a narrow hallway without hitting either of us. Like I said, his aim was ridiculously good.

What surprised me was that Rin had to see that Makoto was with us, and still thought that suddenly appearing out of nowhere inside an abandoned building was a good idea.

I wasn’t the target, but my whole life flashed before my eyes as that row of bench chairs flew past me. I wonder if Rin saw something too, before all that metal and plastic mowed him down like grass.

* * *

The next day, we got chewed out by the school counselor for trespassing. He didn’t say a word about Makoto or Rin, though. Even if he had, it would have made no difference, but Samezuka Academy didn’t want to be implicated, so Nagisa and I got off with a warning. Good riddance.

Still, for the rest of the morning, I couldn’t stop thinking about Rin. I was going to talk to him for the first time in three years, and I had no idea what I was going to say. I was almost glad Makoto would be lying in bed next to him. Whenever I get stuck in conversations, Makoto always knows what to say, and the moment I remembered that, I stopped worrying about the upcoming visit.

In the end, it turned out differently than I expected, though. The moment Nagisa and I arrived upstairs, we found Makoto sitting outside his room in a neck brace and cast. I was about to tell him off for that, but then he told me he had apologized to Rin, but Rin refused to talk to him, so Makoto felt he owed it to Rin to leave the room for a while, to let him be.

At that point, I knew precisely what I was going to say to Rin, even without Makoto, so I told him and Nagisa to wait, then closed the door behind me. The moment Rin saw it was me, he started talking, but I didn’t catch anything he said, because the first thing I did was go over to his bed and hit him in the face.

I didn’t hit that hard, but it shut him up at once.

“Are you stupid?” I told him when he looked like he was finally listening to reason. “I know you were stalking us, I could tell someone was there, so you must have seen Makoto was with us. We were so careful, too. If you had just left and waited outside, it would have been fine, but you just had to make a scene and appear in the hallway like a ghost. Didn’t I tell you not to scare him, ever? And then you had the nerve to make him feel bad about it. Just how long has Makoto been sitting outside instead of resting in bed where he belongs? Don’t you get how much this hurts him, too?!”

I might have said more, but then Rin started crying.

“But… my shoulder… it’s ruined… the doctor said I’ll, never, compete again…” is what I caught before he choked.

At those words, I got so weak my knees gave out, and I had to sit down on Makoto’s bed. I never told Makoto, but we raced one time when Rin came back from Australia at the end of first year of junior high. I won, and it hurt Rin so much he said he would never swim again.

That’s when I stopped swimming, too. I blamed myself so much, it was hard to even breathe, let alone swim, or carve a proper Sceptile out of wood. I couldn’t even bring myself to tell Makoto about it. I was just too scared… of what he would think of me.

It was stupid to think that way. I know, because that’s what I told Makoto about his own worries, but he had an excuse, and I didn’t. That's how I felt, anyway.

For a while, neither of us said anything. Rin couldn’t stop crying once the flood gates opened, and I just sat there with my face buried in my hands, trying to breathe. Until…

“Haru…”

Rin’s voice was so small, he sounded like a squeaky toy.

“I’m sorry… I’m so sorry for what I did back then… I’m sorry, for everything…”

At first I was so shocked, I couldn’t say anything. I just lifted my head to stare at him, and when I saw his face, I suddenly felt lighter. I had no idea I needed to hear those words, but I really did. Even Rin looked like it felt liberating to apologize. Like someone confessing their sins on their death bed, knowing they’ll be forgiven because they’re dying.

I was not done being upset, though. Not yet.

“Apologize to Makoto and we’re even.”

“Okay…”

“Do you need a tissue?”

He told me he didn’t, but then he started bawling again, so I took that as a yes.

Ten minutes later, Makoto got his bed back.

* * *

When I came back the next day, Rin told me he called up Yamazaki to see if they might be able to meet again, now that Rin was facing at least one year of physical therapy, possibly more. Yamazaki Sousuke was his best friend at Sano Elementary. He was annoying, and we hated each other, but that doesn’t matter right now. It turns out that during middle school, Yamazaki overworked himself and wrecked his own shoulder, but he skipped surgery and went with just rehabilitation because he was hoping to recover enough to swim with Rin in high school, even if it was just for one year. Apparently, he had met a guy at the hospital who decided to skip surgery so he could play basketball with his high school team next year, and that gave Yamazaki hope that he could do the same.

Well, so much for that. It was a stupid thing to do, anyway. But then Rin told us that now that he was scheduled for another surgery, Yamazaki started thinking about getting surgery too, so the two of them could recover together. Rin said he would wait for him if he did, so Yamazaki said he would call the hospital and schedule an appointment.

It was strange, listening to all that talk about rehabilitation and therapy, probably because Makoto never needed any of that, not even after his first time. I must have made a face, because Rin asked me what it was about, so I told him. To which he said,

“Yeah, well, Makoto’s a fucking mutant.”

I’m glad Makoto laughed, because I can’t argue with that, and I didn’t feel like hitting Rin again.

* * *

I guess that, in the end, things turned out for the best. Rin doesn’t get to chase his father’s dream anymore, but he’s not alone, either. I’m sure he and Yamazaki will work things out eventually, and maybe find their own dreams instead of following someone else’s.

As for me, I’m at the hospital right now, carving a Mega Sceptile. Makoto will definitely need a third shelf after this one, because it’s already bigger than most of the other ones. He’s been telling Rin about his get-well collection, and now Rin can’t stop staring and telling me how good I am at wood-carving. My face is so smug by now that Makoto can’t stop laughing, but Rin still keeps praising me. I didn’t expect him to be so childish.

…I guess I’ll carve him a Charmander when I’m done. He looks like a Fire-type to me.


End file.
